Mr Biggs, Headmaster at the College, came to take assembly here for the final time as he ends 15 years in the HM Study. He spoke about how former pupils return over the years with much fondness in their hearts, he spoke about his own warm memories of schools he has both studied or been a teacher at and he explained that the word alumnae, often used to describe people who belong to a previous school, derivates from the Latin word alere meaning to nourish. Nourishing, cultivating, feeding, growing ourselves and each other is very definitely a primary focus of our time together at King’s and so he was certainly leaning on an open door and may have spotted several gently nodding heads around the room. We all need a feeding station and they say you are what you eat.
The Union Flag is flying high on the flag pole and we are a week away from celebrating both our own and the Queen’s Platinum Jubilees after 70 years of service. The Queen’s celebrations will head on into half term and it may be that you are a big part of some plans in your area to mark the record breaking tenure. 89% of the UK population is under 70 and hence have only known life under the reign of one monarch – Elizabeth II is a constant in the vast majority of people’s lives here.
At the very start of their nourishing and tenure here at King’s are the 2 year olds and I was on a walk with them shortly after Mr Bigg’s assembly. We were out looking for different flower types hoping to match them to the pictures we had. I have to say, there are lots of very beautiful sights around the site with both wild and cultivated flowers really coming to the fore.
There will be more flowers around this weekend when two pupils who have both benefitted from nourishment at King’s get married here. One went all the way through the whole King’s experience and the other started at Year 9 where they met. No doubt there will be a large number of former pupils in the gathering and I very much hope they all have fond memories of their time here. We wish them hearty congratulations, a joyous day tomorrow and many happy years together.
We had another former pupil here recently who was in fact a contemporary of Mr Rudkin – another product of King’s. She saw me at the end of her wander around and said how nice it had been to see familiar places and also that “…I bumped into Mr Thomas and Jamie on my way round”. The difference in what she called them made me chuckle as one will always be a teacher to her and the other just a mate in her year.